Longs Chapel was built circa 1871 by local landowner Jacob
Long, a member of the Church of the United Brethren in
Christ who had opposed slavery, in accord with his church. The
chapel was erected on land near to where "a congregation" of
African Americans already were living on the site of a former
plantation. The United Brethren church acquired the Longs Chapel tract in 1869 for
the area's black community and specifically deeded
it "for the purpose of a church, burial ground, and school
house.”
Soon after the chapel's construction, African-American
households, including
those persons formerly enslaved, clustered in the vicinty of Longs Chapel.
Eventually the community, originally named Old Athens but
later renamed
Zenda, grew to 17 households of 80 people by 1900,
with a post office and general store. It thrived
for many years, but by about 1930 Zenda was largely abandoned
as
residents had either died or relocated to other
places, including nearby Harrisonburg
as well as points beyond the central Shenandoah Valley.
By the turn of the 21st century, the only vestiges of the
Reconstruction-era Zenda community were its nearly vanished chapel and an overgrown graveyard behind the building.